Art and photography are creative mediums that I have always been passionate about and feminism is a topic that I am incredibly interested in as a self identified feminist. As a result of these interests I received a number of books for Christmas last year, including “The Art of Reflection” which is about how female artist have presented their bodies in self portraiture and “Art and Feminism” which is an incredibly interesting book that encompasses many topics surrounding the link between feminism and art, with many honourable mentions of influential feminist artist and different critics insights on how their work, often particular pieces link in with feminism.

The book includes essays, quotations and various texts from a number of female  artists, art critics and feminist scholars. The preface and editing of the book was completed by Helena Reckitt, a feminist curator and researcher and the survey was written by the incredibly influential feminist scholar and former chair of New York University’s Department of Performance Studies.

The pre-face of the book was written by Helena Reckitt, even in those first initial pages some very interesting and thought provoking thoughts are made. Reckitt writes that “the trap of heroine worship,” is that “the achievements of women are uncritically celebrated in an understandable but counterproductive effort to compensate for year of neglect.” I think that this statement in certain circumstances is correct. A lot of women who are in male dominated professions such as doctors or scientists are often celebrated for simply choosing to take their chosen career path. I think that such achievements are commendable as girls and young women are often discouraged from choosing to study certain subjects or take certain jobs. However, when this celebration, or “worship” as Reckitt suggests, takes away from their actually achievements within their field (when compared to men as well as women) this  “worship” can be harmful. For example if a public speaker who made an  well planned, well presented, thought provoking speech on a serious topic was not a native English speaker and all anybody could talk was how well they spoke English, it devalues the content of the speech. On the other hand, however, this statement is untrue, in the art world self identified feminist artist’s (or occasionally simply female artists’) work is looked at incredibly critically. Critics and viewers alike automatically search for some kind of feminist reading or political subtext within artworks.

Reckitt also goes on to say later in the pre-face that stems from the same idea that some female artist find “the feminist label restrictive, threatening to overshadow other elements of their work.” Louise Bourgeois, one of the most influential feminist artist of  the 20th Century has in the past denied being a feminist, this may be because she feels that if she labels herself and thus, her work as feminist it may diminish the many other strong themes in her work. Other female artist of colour, have in the past and present denied being “feminist artist” because they feel that the feminism movement for the greater part of history has been about the rights and freedom of middle class white women with a complete disregard for the rights of women of colour. I think that this is a fair point, if you feel that your rights have been ignored and you relate this discrimination to a particular label, you are completely within your right to not identify with the movement. However, I feel that within the current movement of third wave feminism, the importance of inclusion for all women, including women of the LGBT community and women from all races and cultural backgrounds is growing.

Peggy Phelan states later in the survey that “Writing about art has traditionally been concerned with that which is interior to the frame, whereas feminism has focused primarily on what lies outside he frame of patriarchal logic, representation, history and justice.” I believe that this is a very intriguing analogy as it raises questions as to whether or not feminist art is appreciated enough for its aesthetic nature and perhaps too much for its social and political allegory. At the same time, it suggests that the social and political nature of artworks that are not typically considered feminist have traditionally not been looked at as critically as maybe they should have been at the time of production. Many non- feminist artworks from history are now looked at through a critical lens, although critics views are now in retrospective and cannot reflect on current events of the time. The critical viewpoint that Phelan describes suggests taking a step when critically analyzing art, viewing it within it’s social, political and historical context.

I found this book very interesting, but at times difficult to read, I often had to take a break and allow myself to process the essays and make connections before continuing. I also found myself having to read over things again to understand them better. I was very glad that I was gifted this book as opposed to borrowing from a library as I was able to highlight certain quotes and passages that I found interesting or didn’t completely understand as well as marking pages that contained artwork that I was inspired by or found particularly intriguing.